Slashdot videos: Now with more Slashdot!

View

Discuss

Share

We've improved Slashdot's video section; now you can view our video interviews, product close-ups and site visits with all the usual Slashdot options to comment, share, etc. No more walled garden! It's a work in progress -- we hope you'll check it out (Learn more about the recent updates).

adeelarshad82 writes "In a secret bunker deep in the Swiss Alps, European researchers deposited a 'digital genome' that will provide the blueprint for future generations to read data stored using defunct technology. The sealed box containing the key to unpick defunct digital formats will be locked away for the next quarter of a century behind a 3-1/2 ton door strong enough to resist nuclear attack at the data storage facility, known as the Swiss Fort Knox. The capsule is the culmination of the four-year 'Planets' project, which draws on the expertise of 16 European libraries, archives, and research institutions, to preserve the world's digital assets as hardware and software is superseded at a blistering pace. The project hopes to preserve 'data DNA,' the information and tools required to access and read historical digital material and prevent digital memory loss into the next century."

"The sealed box containing the key to unpick defunct digital formats will be locked away for the next quarter of a century behind a 3-1/2 ton door"..."the information and tools required to access and read historical digital material and prevent digital memory loss into the next century."

Perhaps they should include the calculations they used to equate 25 years with 90 years.

Always been wondering what those Swiss are doing under those mountains. Storing information about data formats, sure. This is propaganda straight from Them - They want you to believe this to secure what is *really* down there. Data formats, right - They could as well hang out a sign reading "The content of this underground bunker complex is BORING. Don't go there, you'd only waste your time." Something up in Their propaganda department lately? I am used to better work.

Yes, but if the golden records are played backwards, they're actually Rainbow's 1978 Long Live Rock 'n' Roll, which should provide sufficient warning to any semi-intelligent species out there. R.I.P. R.J.D.:/